Things Fall Apart: Chapter 65

Tau Ceti, Robinson Station, 16.8.775 CW

21 megaseconds since the catastrophe

Karenski had expected long silences between volleys of communication between himself and Zephyr. In fact, he had barely managed to get a word in edgewise. Rather than waiting on him, or indeed, on much of anything, a steady stream of messages showed that Zephyr had received an explicit distress call from the Thessalians, and quite properly had decided to go to their aid.

Also not waiting on any word from him came messages formally establishing contact with "whoever currently speaks on behalf of the Tau Ceti Treaty Fleet or Organization" from both Admiral Donato of the David's Star Republic, and Commodore Haraldsdottir. That made sense. Neither of those individuals were fools. The time compression network would have indicated to both those worthies that the new relay was available long before any message from downwell could have reached out to it. Both of them knew the time delay they'd be up against. Like Singer's decision not to wait for orders with a clear-cut distress call to answer, there was every reason for them to get ahead of the lag. Indeed, a glance at Haraldsdottir's message, which used the apparently simultaneous catastrophe as a point of reference for dating, had been in the network's store-and-forward queue some time before the new relay was established.

All these messages digested, he had finally composed a video message to Singer welcoming her—heartily—to the system and inviting her to come downwell as soon as her business with the Thessalians was concluded. He also made a point of thanking her for taking the initiative there, and chose to let his relief at having that problem solved show through.

Not long after sending the message, McCaffrey came into his office, looking a little confused. He gestured to a seat and said, "What's on your mind, Mac?" He had little time for formality, which tweaked some of the officers he now had command of. Mac wasn't one of them, more was the pity. He had not quite figured out how to tweak her at all, yet. In the thesaurus next to "unflappable" was "McCaffrey", apparently.

"You do know you're the Fleet Admiral, right?"

He smiled and pointed at the little sign on his desk that said so. "They keep telling me that, yes. Let me guess. You're puzzled by the tone I set in my message up to Singer."

It wasn't a question, which was fine, because he was right. Mac nodded and said, "It would be more...traditional to order her downwell than to suggest it as a possible destination."

He stood, then, finding himself full of nervous energy on a level he hadn't felt in years. As a younger officer, he had often been a pacer, even a fidgeter. By the time he'd made captain, he'd mostly lost the habit, having learned that presenting a calm face to the crew was an important part of the command illusion. He needed no such artifice with McCaffrey.

After pacing a short while, gathering his thoughts, he said, "How far out have you been on independent command, Mac?"

He actually knew the answer, but he had a direction he wanted to steer the conversation.

She was, however, impossible to put one over on. "I haven't. I'm a yard dog, and you know it."

He tried another tack. "All right, then, let's try this: suppose I hadn't been available to take command here. Who was next senior?"

She thought a moment and then blinked. "I suppose I was—am."

"Right. Would you have called yourself Fleet Admiral?"

"Pffft. No. I'm a captain."

"But you'd have been the senior officer on station, as far as you knew at that moment, the senior officer in the entire Fleet, as a corporate body. Until ten kiloseconds ago, this station was the entirety of the Fleet. So: why not?"

She considered, then said, "No. I'd have called myself station commandant. I might even had called myself acting commander-in-chief or something, but...no."

He nodded, sitting on the edge of his desk to face her. "Out there on the edge of the system is a woman who has been commanding on her own for twenty-one megaseconds. She had a brief stint at Gliese 581 under Haraldsdottir, but even there she had a long leash. She's had plenty of time to figure out that at this point, there's pretty much nobody who can tell her no, any more than we could take away her birthday. Only her own basic good nature keeps her from turning pirate. If she really feels she has a good reason not to come downwell, no order of mine will make her set that course, any more than it would the Thessalians. I could threaten to court-martial her, but she could ignore that as easily as we can ignore the weather down on Cherryh."

There was a pause while Mac thought that through, then she said, "Surely, her crew would never support mutiny. Her XO...Alexander? Ze has a straight-and-narrow record. Very smart, even creative, but ze'd never back a mutiny against Command."

"I assure you, ze would, and without a moment's hesitation. What's out there on that ship is no longer just a crew, Mac. I'm not sure I'd call them a family, per se, but certainly a community. I've already got through the executive summary, but also early pages of the detailed report. I know what they've all been through together. The most likely objections would come from Espinoza or Terranova, both outsiders; or maybe this Cordé, their comms officer, who seems to have been the skeptic for a while. They've all backed every play Singer's made so far. They trust her on a level few captains ever have any reason to earn. Right now, if she chose to walk into fire, most of them would stand right beside her."

He could see McCaffrey wasn't buying it. "You gleaned all that from a precis and a few pages of narrative?"

Karenski nodded. "Well, that, and having taught the woman. She always had a spark to her that made me think she'd make a fantastic CO. She let her own self-doubt turn her away, and I didn't press her, despite temptation. You know what my class was about. It was a filtering function. She self-selected out, and that's part of what the class is for. So did Alexander, by the way, who was in the same class, despite being only a second-year. In both cases, I thought they had the right stuff, but that didn't matter if they didn't. Well, now, circumstances pushed them forward, and they didn't shirk.

"If there is any chance of rebuilding—rebuilding anything at all—I need them, and I need them on their own terms, not mine; because if they decide they don't like mine, they can turn around and offer their services to Donato, or go back to Gliese and offer to set Haraldsdottir up as a queen, or whatever they want to do, and there's exactly zero consequence I can bring to bear on them that will matter."

Well, he had wanted to find a way to tweak her. He had found it. He saw her becoming more and more appalled as the full import of what he was saying hit home. They had both been too busy coordinating the relief efforts to really think much about it. Now, there it was: they were both creatures of a system they had then chosen to be active participants in.

That system no longer existed. Or rather, it only existed because they remembered it, and still chose to act as if it existed.

It wasn't a maybe. It wasn't a hypothetical game. In twenty-one megaseconds, only three stray foreign freighters and Zephyr had made a call on the system. The precis accompanying Singer's almost excessive report included the news from Ross 508 and Serpent's Head, the damage done in Gliese, and even in David's Star, whose own stations and ships were unaffected except where struck by TCTF ships gone rampant. There were still dozens of systems to hear from, or about, but it would be tens of megaseconds before the meager mobile resources available to them—even allowing for David's Star's help—allowed them to survey all the damage, and find other pockets like Gliese that had survivors.

Finally, subdued, McCaffrey said, "Do you think they will?"

Deliberately obtuse, he responded, "Will what?"

She allowed exasperation to show. "Come downwell."

"I do! For one thing, Singer's from Cherryh. She's got family there. She's going to want to see them. That alone would bring her downwell. For another, she's carrying the aide to the ambassador to David's Star, who has her own report to make and, apparently, a resignation letter from her boss to deliver. And lastly, Singer is simply not actually likely to turn pirate on us. She believes in what we were doing, believes in finding the scattered pockets of the diaspora and getting them talking again, if nothing else. At least, she used to, and I hope she still does."

"Permission to speak freely?"

"Since when do you need to ask?"

"You're pinning an awful lot on your memories of a cadet who's long since grown up."

He mulled that. "It's a fair point. Would you like to wager on it?"

She sighed. "I have never once won a bet with you. This is unlikely to be the day that changes."

He smiled a little smugly. They were silent together for a moment, then finally, he slapped his leg in the age-old gesture that it was time to get on with things, and said, "Have you had our comms people go looking for that signal Zephyr talked about, yet?"

"As soon as Commander McMaster came on shift," she responded. "He found the signal in the current comms buffer and is already going through and collecting as much as he can for analysis, especially of those nonary packets. I haven't seen him that excited by anything in quite some time. Kid with a lollipop."

"Getting to solve puzzles is good for morale. Certainly, we could use the boost! Anything else?"

"No. Latest streamed information from Zephyr indicates they managed, after a little bit of negotiation, to convince the freighters that accepting their reaction mass was no different from accepting it from the anchorage bunkers. It's still 'foreign' hydrogen. Given the time lag and the usual time to actually handle the transfer, I expect we'll see jump-flares in about eighty more kiloseconds. I've already sent them clearance, but I doubt they'd have waited for it."

Karenski felt his shoulders lower and his jaw unclench, unaware of just how long he'd been holding that tension. It seemed like forever. He could not keep the grin from his face. "And they're about thirty kiloseconds lag out, still?"

"Yep."

"So they'll actually be jumping in fifty, and Singer will, if my bet's on the right marker, be turning sunward probably before they've all jumped away. How long before their stream is likely to include any direct reply to anything we've sent them?"

"Still about five kilos before they even receive our initial acknowledgement of login, so, call it dinner shift. Best bet for a reply to what you just sent is tomorrow's Alpha."

"Good enough. Anything else?"

"No, but I expect planetside will be figuring out for themselves that we've got a new visitor, soon. You might want to consider dropping them a line."

He made a face. He really did not enjoy dealing with the planetary provisional government, much. They were competent enough, but they were politicians, through and through.

McCaffrey was back to being unflappable, and just sat, looking coolly at him, waiting for his fit of pique to pass.

It did.

"You're right, of course. Do me the courtesy of getting me a line to them, will you?"

She stood. "Of course, sir. You'll take it here?"

"That's the plan. Dismissed, Captain."

As McCaffrey left, he sat back down in his chair, leaning back.

He really hoped he was right about Singer.